Essay about Satire and Personal Satirical Devices

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SATIRICAL STYLES
1. Direct satire is directly stated
2. Indirect satire is communicated through characters in a situation
TYPES OF SATIRE
There are two types of satire.
Horatian satire is: tolerant, witty, wise and self-effacing
Juvenalian satire is: angry, caustic, resentful, personal
SATIRICAL DEVICES

1. Humor:
Exaggeration or overstatement: Something that does happen, but is exaggerated to absurd lengths. This is the most common type of satire. For example, a caricature, the formalized walk of Charlie Chaplin.
Understatement: A statement that seems incomplete or less than truthful given the facts. Think sarcasm with the intentions of evoking change. For example, Fielding’s description of a grossly fat and repulsively ugly Mrs. Slipslop: “She was not remarkably handsome.”
Incongruity: A marked lack of correspondence or agreement.
Deflation: the English professor mispronounces a word, the President slips and bangs his head leaving the helicopter, etc.
Linguistic games / Malapropism: A deliberate mispronunciation of a name or term with the intent of poking fun; weird rhymes, etc.
Surprise: Twist endings, unexpected events
2. Irony: Literary device conveying the opposite of what is expected; in which there is an incongruity or discordance between what one says or does, and what one means or what is generally understood. It is lighter, less harsh in wording than sarcasm, though more cutting because of its indirectness. For example, Marge reading “Fretful Mother” as she ignores her child.

The ability to recognize irony is one of the surest tests of intelligence and sophistication. Irony speaks words of praise to imply blame and words of blame to imply praise. Writer is using a tongue-in-cheek style. Irony is achieved through such techniques as hyperbole and understatement.

3. Invective: Name calling, harsh, abusive language directed against a person or cause. Invective is a vehicle, a tool of anger. It is the bitterest of all satire.

4. Mock Encomium: Praise which is only apparent and which suggests blame instead.

5. Grotesque: Creating a tension between laughter and horror or revulsion; the essence of all “sick humor: or “black humor”

6. Comic Juxtaposition: Linking together with no commentary items which normally do not go together; Pope’s line in Rape of the Lock: “Puffs, patches, bibles, and billet-doux”.

7. Mock Epic / Mock Heroic: Using elevated diction and devices from the epic or the heroic to deal with low or trivial subjects.

8. Parody: A mocking imitation, composition imitating or burlesquing another, usually serious, piece of work. Designed to ridicule in nonsensical fashion an original piece of work. Parody is in literature what the caricature and cartoon are in art.

9. Inflation: Taking a real-life situation and blowing it out of proportion to make it ridiculous and showcase its faults.

10. Diminution:
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